Evan and Aaron (sic?) had been after me to check out a couple bands at Lit. CMJ has been a holocaust of crap for the last couple of years and 2009 is no exception, but as musical tastes go, theirs are pretty good, given our age disparities and Lit has been good to be and the So Hideous franchise, so on the bike I went. I got there just in time for things to run behind schedule, but Antarctic were up in fairly short order. Instrumental, with a pretty decent rhythm section, they definitely got the few asses that were in the room moving. There was a fair amount of the "you play the big chord and I'll do the tapping riffs" guitar interplay that Minus The Bear and Don Cab have made newly re-relevant, but it was pretty obvious that they knew how to play and weren't total wank-meisters about it. I'll give them there due props, but reassert again that bands really need to Google their potential band names. I would hope that they would be aware of the Eric Richter franchise that plays music not altogether dissimilar from their stuff, but then again maybe I'm just old.
The Bronzed Chorus were next, representing for the new crop of two piece bands. Again, I would argue that two pieces does not a band make, moreso an act, but the two dudes have evidently played together since middle school. I'd assume (hope) that they are of college age now. They have a nice sense of interplay, but I'd prefer to see and hear them in more of a fleshed-out form. They are on tour with Antarctic and fellow label dudes So Many Dynamos for the next couple of weeks. See about checking them out.
Ho-Ag closed the evening for me. As they set up, more and more things started to give me douche chills about how things might go down. Two guys who seemed like Boston rich kids attracting a lot of attention to themselves before things even started? Check. Moog? Check. Bullhorn? Oh, you know it. Cue checks for keys and cycling gloves. The three or four songs I heard were pretty unimaginative Brainiac meet early D-Plan bites that tried way too hard. I would expect that it's a fine soundtrack (or prelude) to coke/pill-fueled couplings with troubled art-school girls (or maybe boys, but they really don't come off that cool) but from where I stood about four feet from them, it was pretty much ear-rape. Ho-Ag are definitely the type of band that guys that go on to law firms or marketing groups brag about having been in to shitty women in expensive Upper East Side bars. If that's your thing, throw on some cologne and set it off, but I'd defer more towards the bottom of the Hello Sir roster.
R
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